Disaster Recovery

What is disaster recovery? Disaster recovery is a type of business security planning that is meant to offer an organization protection from the effects of a disaster, such as an equipment failure, cyber attack, or even a natural disaster like a fire or flood. An organization with a properly constructed disaster recovery plan is likely to find that it’s much easier to resume needed functions after a disaster than an organization without such a plan.

Business Continuity

Business continuity is related to disaster recovery in many ways. This term refers to the ability of an organization to resume needed business functions following an unplanned emergency or disaster that takes computer systems or networks offline. Business continuity planning is the process of implementing strategies to be used in this situation.

The truth of the matter is that we never know if a disaster is about to strike. Business continuity planning is a way to ensure that when and if it does, the organization can survive that period. Disasters that cause an interruption to business nearly always have a negative impact on the organization’s bottom line, which can be frustrating and cause major issues. This is especially the case with those that generate some or all of their revenue through Internet based services. We’ve compiled some data for you to consider.

Every minute of network downtime averages nearly $8,000 in lost revenue, according to a study by the Ponemon Institute.

Based on the 2017 Veeam Availability Report, 66% of companies have expressed that data loss and downtime badly affect digital transformation strategies, while 40% said downtime had a negative effect on their brand.

In that same survey, it was found that for large enterprises, minutes of downtime can cost millions of dollars.

Please note that QuoteColo will not distribute the information to any other company for any purpose beyond the scope of this request.

What Disaster Planning Assists With

As we mentioned earlier, there are countless threats that can cause these network and system disruptions. You may think that because one sort of threat isn’t a risk for you that you don’t need to take time to have a plan, but this is not good logic. Every single business has risks and incidents that can cause downtime and lost revenue. We’ll talk about some of the events that lead to this below.

Natural Disasters: When floods, fires, tornadoes, and earthquakes happen, it can lead to system failure and data loss. Even a minor malfunction can destroy important data that you will never get back. This is why it’s a huge risk to have your data only in one place. If it is somehow compromised or destroyed, you have nothing to lean back on.

Network Issues: Mistakes happen. That means your fiber optic cable could get cut or your network could fail or your local area network could be disabled. Each of these things constitutes a huge problem until a resolution is found. If you have a business that needs constant connectivity, you need to be sure network availability is at the top of your priority list.

Cybersecurity: Cybersecurity threats seem to be around every corner. It’s something that no organization can ignore, no matter how small or how large they are. Things like Ransomware and similar threats are on the rise and can cause huge problems for businesses who aren’t prepared. Having your data backed up on a regular basis is an important to step in avoiding these attacks, which can bring down your entire business plan if a breach occurs.

Human Error: Anyone at your business is a point of vulnerability when it comes to outages. A vendor or employee might do something by accident that causes a major problem. This could be because of a mistake or even on purpose if someone has a bone to pick with you. You need to be ready for it, just in case it does happen.

These are, of course, not the only potential opportunities for disaster to strike but they offer a broad view of the things that can happen which lead to lost time and revenue. Disasters aren’t something you can determine will happen in advance. But what you can do is be ready for them when they do happen, so they cost you less when they do pop up and make a mess of things.

Factors to Consider

It is extremely important when safeguarding your business to understand the basics of disaster recovery. Two terms that often come up are recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). These are policies that shape a disaster recovery plan and ensure that your business is able to recover and get back to its former self following one of the above disasters (or something entirely different).

Recovery Point Objective

When someone mentions RPO, they are referring to the moment in time in which you want your data recovered from backup storage. This is the amount of data you need in order for operations to resume as normal after a network or system goes down. This might be measured in days, hours, or minutes. Essentially, the RPO is the amount of work you can handle losing if the technology infrastructure fails. It also speaks to the frequency in which you require backups.

Recovery Time Objective

RTO, however, is the amount of time that a system or network may be down after a disaster occurs. For instance, you may have some systems that are rarely used that can be down for days without any interruption to the daily workflow. Other applications may need to be back up within hours or minutes to avoid losing time and revenue. Determining these numbers is crucial and finding a way to get things back before situations are dire is equally important.

Total Cost of Ownership

Another term that you should be aware of is total cost of ownership, or TCO. This refers to a comprehensive cost of a product or system over time. This would include the purchase price, as well as all other costs down the line. When speaking about IT, this might be the cost of software and hardware acquisition, support and management, end user expenses, communication, and the cost of training, downtime, and other productivity loss. As you can guess, disasters will make the TCO skyrocket if not dealt with in a timely manner.

Geographic Concerns

Geographic diversity is important when it comes to disaster recovery. It relates to how far away the primary and backup server sites are. The reason this is critical to consider is because you don’t want both of your sites to be in the line of fire when a disaster rolls through. Of course, it’s easier to have the secondary site nearby, but a storm or natural disaster could knock out both centers. As such, many recommend that your secondary site is at least 50 to 100 miles away, depending on the requirements of your business.

Hosted Disaster Recovery Options

There are two major options when it comes to hosted DR options. These include colocation and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). The other options available are typically variations on these two, which we will define below.

Colocation

Colocation can be described as a data center rental. There are countless colocation centers available, each of which does things in its own way. In general, a colocation company offers data center infrastructure including Internet connectivity, power, cooling, and cabling. Your business will rent either hardware, rack space, or floor space within that center. Colocation is known to be an affordable option when contrasted with building a data center.

Pros:

Cost savings from leasing rather than building

Redundant power, speed, and security

Low latency in data center if near headquarters

Cons:

Multi year leases can be expensive

Additional space is not always available and server hardware is often mandated

Continued dependency on a physical location

If located near headquarters, disaster outages

Leasing costs over long time periods

Infrastructure costs add up over time

Constant datacenter costs

Pricing models vary

Disaster Recovery as a Service

DRaaS, on the other hand, is a cloud based solution for disaster recovery. Your business can replicate virtual machines (or sometimes, physical servers) to the service provider which then offers the option to failover to and run those virtual machines in the cloud when a disaster hits.

Pros:

True cost of ownership is lower

Shared infrastructure leads to cost containment

Lack of major capital expenditures

Services are turnkey

Flexibility with protection levels

Scalability is much greater

One focus makes them better at it

Professional support available

Datacenter size determines pricing scales

Cons:

Some providers may overcommit network resources

Geographic location compared to corporate

Large recoveries or failovers can increase expense temporarily

QuoteColo’s Offerings

QuoteColo can help you find the right company to ensure your next disaster recovery goes as smoothly as possible. In addition to that, we do this service at no cost to your business. Our company has a focus on colocation, managed hosting, and dedicated servers. The agents at QuoteColo have over 15 years of experience in colocation hosting and the IT industry. In addition, most of our providers are leaders in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

On top of that, these providers offer great solutions like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, which are known for being popular and full-featured. We’ll look at both of these below.

Amazon Web Services

AWS was the first large company involved in cloud computing and is still one of the most well-known. Companies like Netflix and Airbnb use AWS EC2 to provide their varied services for people across the world. AWS offers more than 70 services, including options for database management, frameworks for mobile application scaling, and more.

Pros:

Many years in the market compared to others

Regions, which are groups of data centers, in many locations

Has attained a large amount of compliance certifications

Thousands of software vendors including names like Oracle, Adobe, and SAP

Cons:

Steep learning curve, especially for large businesses

Billing can be quite confusing

Must have Business tier support for enterprise support, which costs more

Most enterprise customers need a custom agreement

Microsoft Azure

While Microsoft Azure is a bit younger than AWS, it’s been gaining ground for a while now. Microsoft has been building new services and offerings to meet AWS on the top of the mounting. Microsoft also has strong relationships with important companies and tons of experience in enterprise sales. Azure has been adding things like large scale virtual machines and SQL Data Warehouse to prove themselves.

Pros:

High availability and redundancy on a global scale

Strong focus on security options

Extreme scalability for easy variability

Pay as you go pricing for easy budget management

Cons:

Needs to be managed and maintained

Platform expertise is a must

Microsoft isn’t a trend leader

Long term roadmap is not available

As you can see, there are plenty of perks for both of these options. It really comes down to deciding what your company needs and doing a little research to see what choice is best for you. Either of the two mentioned above have tons of options when it comes to disaster recovery, with security and backups being an integral part of their core offerings.

QuoteColo Disaster Recovery Assistance

QuoteColo has a reputation for finding qualified disaster recovery providers in various regions of the world. We only consider providers who offer the highest flexibility and cost savings that you can count on. There are many options on a regional basis that may be overlooked that provide services that are above and beyond what you expect. Colocation servers are available, as are many cloud options, depending on your favored solution.

At QuoteColo we also offer a free consultation with no obligation. You simply submit your list of requirements and we’ll get back to you with a list of options to consider. QuoteColo will always source you direct quotes from the most affordable and qualified providers, leaving you with one less things to worry about. If you need assistance with disaster recovery, contact us and see what we can do to help.